But the privately held company is moving in that direction, especially now that the first portion of its most recent financing round is complete.

Reklaim received a land-use permit this month for a 5-acre parcel at the Port of Morrow on the Columbia River in north-central Oregon, where it hopes to open a $50 million tire-recycling facility next year. The site, which could employ 40 people, is one of many that Reklaim is scouting around the country.

Reklaim has run into troubles before in Oregon. It tried to build a tire-recycling plant in St. Helens, located northwest of Portland, but community members objected and the land use permit was denied, Druback said.

But Morrow County already has granted the land-use permit. And Renee Gastineau, a spokeswoman for Reklaim, expressed confidence that the company will receive its environmental permits and open on schedule in the second quarter of 2008.

Reklaim plans to use a patent-pending technique called sublimation in which tires are shredded, heated to 850 degrees Fahrenheit in an oxygen-free environment and then broken down into oil, carbon black and steel. It's a similar process to pyrolysis, which Tacoma-based Organic Energy Conservation Corp. has proposed using to recycle tires at a 30,000-square- foot tire-recycling facility near Yakima.

It is not a new or unique concept, though the promises of the business have not materialized over the years.

"It is technically feasible, but the challenge is making it economically viable," said Druback, the eastern region solid waste manager for Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality.

Because waste tires represent a potential health and fire hazard, environmental regulations can be strict and add to the cost of operating a tire-recycling business. For example, Oregon requires tire-recycling businesses to set aside proceeds to clean up the facility if the business were to fail, Druback said.

There are also regulations on how the tires are stored and processed, making it difficult for recyclers to compete with landfills.

Bill Rose, a managing member at Organic Energy, told the Seattle P-I in April that the tire-recycling market has received some "bad press," with many people professing to have mastered the technology. Rose said his company -- formed earlier this year -- has a unique process that has been tested in other countries.

A story in the Yakima Herald-Republic earlier this month noted some of the regulatory hurdles facing Organic Energy's proposed facility, with Rose voicing frustration and threatening to take the plant elsewhere.

Other facilities are in the works.

Earlier this month, Tampa, Fla.-based EarthFirst Technologies entered into a joint venture with Orion Industrial Services Corp. to create a next-generation tire processing plant in Mobile, Ala. The joint venture will build on the technology behind a reactor, dubbed Green-Go, that has transformed more than 1 million pounds of tire chips into carbon black, oil and steel.

Despite some of the challenges, Druback said there is a real need to do something.

With old tires containing about 5 pounds of carbon and 1.5 gallons of oil, she said, there is a "a lot of inherent energy in tires."

Still, many of the old tires in Oregon are buried at a landfill in Prineville.

Meanwhile, Washington -- which generated 5 million waste tires in 2005 and put 26 percent of them in landfills -- plans to spend $7 million to clean up more than 3 million tires at 56 unauthorized piles in the state.

"Tires are a huge problem, and currently our option is to landfill them," Druback said. "If (Reklaim) could make a go of it, that would be great. It would be a lot better than having them in the ground."